Feb. 24, 2018, 6:39 a.m.

John Shuster, center, John Landsteiner, left, and Matt Hamilton of the U.S. during the men's curling final. (Javier Etxezarreta/EPA-EFE/REX)

John Shuster’s last throw in the eighth end of the Olympic curling final clacked off one Swedish stone and knocked it into another, sending them both skittering out of scoring range.

Five yellow-handled American rocks were left behind.

The score, known as a five-ender, is so rare it has only been topped once before in the history of the men’s or women’s Olympic final. And it effectively clinched gold for Shuster’s erstwhile “rejects,” who rallied from the brink of pool play elimination to claim only the second curling medal ever for the United States.

On Wednesday night, they became the first U.S. women to earn a medal in cross-country skiing, winning the team sprint free. The next day, Randall was elected as an athlete representative on the International Olympic Committee.

Friday, it was Diggins’ turn for more good news as her teammates selected her to serve as flag-bearer for the American squad in the closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Games.

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Feb. 23, 2018, 6:32 a.m.

Germany recorded the biggest upset of the men’s Olympic hockey tournament by holding off Canada for a 4-3 semifinal victory on Friday, setting up an unexpected gold medal matchup on Sunday against the Olympic Athletes from Russia.

“Sounds crazy, right?” said Germany coach Marco Sturm, a former NHL player who briefly played for the Kings.

That it did. Germany, seeded 10th among the 12 entrants, last won an Olympic medal in 1976, a bronze. Germany didn’t qualify for the 2014 Sochi Olympic tournament. The Olympic Athletes from Russia defeated the Czech Republic 3-0 in the first semifinal on Friday at the Gangneung Hockey Center, a victory clinched on an empty-net goal by former NHL standout Ilya Kovalchuk.

A second Russian athlete has failed a doping test at the Pyeongchang Games, a day before the International Olympic Committee's executive board is to decide whether to reinstate the country for Sunday's closing ceremony.

Russian Bobsled Federation President Alexander Zubkov told the Associated Press on Friday that a drug-test sample that pilot Nadezhda Sergeeva gave on Sunday was positive.

The Russian delegation at the Pyeongchang Olympics said in a statement that the substance found was trimetazdine, a medication used for angina sufferers that is listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency as a banned substance affecting the metabolism.

Feb. 23, 2018, 3:11 a.m.

When she arrived for the Winter Olympics in South Korea, Chloe Kim already was an accomplished snowboarder with a handful of endorsement deals from the likes of Visa Inc., Nike Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp.

Then came her dominating performance to win the gold medal in the women's snowboarding halfpipe in Pyeongchang, and the charismatic 17-year-old Southern Californian instantly became a breakout star of the Olympic Games with a future likely to include much more lucrative sponsorship deals.